As we learn to hear God's voice, the importance of community becomes ever clearer. In a world where independence and self-reliance are often glorified, I challenge these notions and invite you to discover the strength found in spiritual interdependence. We'll explore how the support and shared wisdom of community can have an impact on recognizing God's voice within and around us.
This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.
Speaker — Luke Humbrecht
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As we learn to hear God's voice, the importance of community becomes ever clearer. In a world where independence and self-reliance are often glorified, I challenge these notions and invite you to discover the strength found in spiritual interdependence. We'll explore how the support and shared wisdom of community can have an impact on recognizing God's voice within and around us.
This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.
Speaker — Luke Humbrecht
Visit Our Website — https://thelookout.church
Take Your Next Step--- https://thelookout.church/connect
Connect with Us --- https://thelookout.church/new
Give to Support the Ministry --- https://thelookout.church/give
Visit our website
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Instagram
Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in His presence, growing in His family and living on His mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at thelookoutchurch.
Speaker 2:How we doing. This morning we got some sun. It's a good day. We've already won. Today We've received communion. We sang our hearts out. It's been awesome. So this is just, maybe, maybe just the icing on the cake here. So good to see you this morning. If we haven't met yet, my name is Luke. So good to have you with us today.
Speaker 2:We are going to jump into the Word here in a second. I do want to invite you to join me in worship by receiving the tithes and offerings. It's something we do every week. This is part of this is part of the gift of being in family together. As we get to invest back in with what God has entrusted to us as good stewards, we bring it back into His house, and I just want you to know. Every week we have a chance to highlight something going on around here. One of the things that's been really cool is we've been having a lot of equipping opportunities for the languages of God. You heard about the prophetic roundtable. Last week we even did a.
Speaker 2:We do a once a month dream seminar where some of you know as we, as we have dreams in the night. It's important that we get tools to know how to interpret this. We know how God is speaking to us. I got an email from somebody in our community this week. This particular couple does missions, work overseas in closed countries, and so we can't talk about it openly, who they are or where they go, but he assured me that the last several weeks that the he said, the frequency of my dreams has greatly increased over the past several weeks, and some of the dreams have actually provided their team with foresight and guidance regarding upcoming challenges and opportunities with their with their overseas work, and so God is coming in the night giving them, you know, instructions for how to go about the mission and the assignments God has called them to all around the world. God is speaking in our dreams. We have a the ability to be together in such a way we can help interpret and and and and bring meaning and understanding to the dreams that God has given us. Isn't that a cool thing? And so that's just one of the many things that happen around here. So, as we give, we're giving that we can become the kind of community that walks with each other, growing and understanding, not just to interpret dreams for ourselves, but to grow as people, as as people of love that know how to move into this world, declaring the love of God and languages that people actually understand.
Speaker 2:Come on, that lights me up. I hope that lights you up. Everybody, stand up for a second. We're gonna read our vision statement together and we do this to index our hearts, to remind ourselves what's important. Don't be timid. If you've never read this before, just pretend like you know it by heart. Okay, pretend like you're all in. If you do know this, let's read it together and rejoice in what we've been given. So let's go. Our vision is Jesus, abiding in His presence and growing in His family and living on His mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Can we give it up for Jesus together in this place? Now, stay standing. Stay standing. Find somebody around you, introduce yourself, show them a little love this morning before we jump into the message.
Speaker 1:Come on, bro, bring it in man. Love you dude, love you man.
Speaker 2:Alright, beautiful, take a seat. If you have your Bibles, if you have your Bibles, open up to 1st Samuel, where, smack dab in the Old Testament, we'll have the scripture on the screen. This is where we're gonna start today. This is in 1st Samuel. We're gonna start in chapter 3 and go from there. We're actually we've been in a series about hearing God's voice. Over the last several weeks We've talked about a lot of different angles conversation. It's one of the most distinct parts of following Jesus the assumption that he is our shepherd and we are His sheep and we actually, according to His words, my sheep know my voice, and so there's this innate part of us that the life that we've been given to is not just necessarily following a rule book, but actually listening to the voice of our shepherd and listening and responding. So let's start here today. 1st Samuel, chapter 3.
Speaker 2:Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli, and the word of the Lord was rare in those days. There was no frequent vision. At that time, eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the Ark of God was, and the Lord called Samuel and he said here I am. And ran to Eli and said here I am for you called me. But he said I did not call. Lie down again. So he went and lay down and the Lord began again Samuel. Samuel rose and went to Eli and said here I am for you, called me. And he said I did not call my son. Lie down again. Samuel did not yet know the Lord and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time and he arose and went to Eli and said here I am for you, called me. Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel go lie down and if he calls you, you shall say speak, lord, for your servant hears. So Samuel went and lay down in his place and the Lord came and stood calling out, as other times, samuel, samuel and Samuel said speak, lord, for your servant hears. Then the Lord said to Samuel behold, I am about to do a new thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle, jesus, this morning. We thank you to open your word to us, god. We confess the inadequacy of our own ideas and our own thinking and our dependence on you and your word. We thank you, jesus, that your voice is life to us. So, if nothing else this morning, god, my prayer, my deepest prayer, for every single person in this room, is that we would hear your voice, god, in whatever way that you want to speak. So open your word to us. Today, jesus, everybody said amen, amen. So this passage we read.
Speaker 2:As many of you know, it's the origin story of one of the most significant voices in the Old Testament in the scripture. Samuel would be known. He would become known as a seer, a priest, a judge, a prophet, even a military leader. He had quite the resume. At the end of his life, he would be the one that would install and anoint Israel's first king Saul, and then later King David, and so he had quite the track record.
Speaker 2:But as a child, he actually had to learn how to distinguish the voice of the Lord. It wasn't something that just came naturally for him. He heard God speak, but he didn't know it was the Lord. It had not yet been revealed to him, and so, even as a child, he needed the wisdom of an older sage to come alongside him and explain why, in the world, he's hearing voices in the middle of the night. Right, and some of you parents know what that's like to be awoken in the middle of the night and with the kid coming in the room and we expediently send them back to their room and, sad to say, with little instruction about hearing God's voice somewhere else. Right is just, please, just get back to your room. In this particular case, eli, he perceived what was going on with Samuel and he said you need to go back and you need to position yourself and posture yourself because God is trying to speak to you.
Speaker 2:Right, and so, over the last several weeks, we've been talking about this idea of hearing God's voice, which is critical, that we become the kind of people that are tuned in to heaven, tuned into the voice of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we've talked a lot about, though, how God is speaking to you as an individual, listening to the inner voice of God, which is which often, often times comes in whispers and promptings, maybe dreams, visions, like we talked about before, things that come from the inside out. God often speaks in that still small voice, right, you can go back and listen to those messages. But also he comes from the outside in and through, through the scriptures, right, and through prophetic words, through Looking out and creation some of you just getting a word from God looking at the mountains today right, we perceive what God is doing out there and and we're able to hear his voice from the outside in. And so we've talked a lot about how we each have our own Language or kind of a love language with God, and that's different than the person you're sitting next to, likely, and that's good, it's actually really good. And so our lifelong journey is learning to pay attention to how God is uniquely coming to us.
Speaker 2:But the truth is that God doesn't just speak to us as individuals. He comes to us together in Community, and this is a very important theme or topic I want to dive into just for a few minutes today the importance of spiritual community when it comes to hearing and and discerning the voice of God. That it's not a personal project, a personal, private project between you and God, but he brings us into community and this is one of the big shifts that happen when we come into Christ. Eugene Peterson says it like this. He says one of the immediate changes that the gospel makes is grammatical instead of instead of, we instead of I, are Instead of my, and us instead of me. Okay, we instead of I are our, our instead of my, us instead of me.
Speaker 2:And it's true that when we come into Christ we come into spiritual family. God's family is when we can practice hearing to God together in a way that's healthy, safe, fun and encouraging. Okay, and this oftentimes comes through the wisdom of a sage, or it comes through the wonder of a child, that comes from the fire of a sermon that gets into your bones, or it comes from everyday conversations with friends who are willing to speak truth into your eyes and to your life, into your heart. God sets us into family because he knows that's what most, that's what he designed us for and that's what brings the fullness of his voice to life in our lives. But we have to acknowledge a couple things and if you'll allow me to go on a short pastoral rant, I will, okay, all right, every now and then you need to like just a short little, passive, aggressive pastoral rant. Okay, I'm joking. We have to face up to the fact that we don't generally like to depend on other people. Okay, so before we even talk about hearing God in community, can we just talk about community for a second?
Speaker 2:We are in this really interesting age, particularly 2024, one of the one of the the, the tones, the moods of this day in age is one of high mistrust, high suspicion and a polarized world that will only increase as we continue throughout this year. Okay, this is what we're facing, this is what you face every day, this is what I face every day, and what's happened over the decades that has been the disintegration of community, not just in church life, but in almost every form of community, and where God has actually designed us for a life that is marked by oneness, that is marked by Interdependence, that is marked by belonging. We live in a time where we have now what's been offered to has has been the holy trinity of isolation that I call Amazon and Door-dash and Netflix, and the technologies that have made it easier than ever before to never have to need or interact with anybody outside of your own home. Are you guys with me? And it's a very interesting thing, and it's not that I would do anything Very interesting thing, and it's not that I would demonize any one of those things. Probably all of us have access to all of those things I just mentioned.
Speaker 2:But we have to understand there is a pole, there is a magnetic energy away from Interconnectivity, especially and even in the church interconnectivity, and more towards dependence, self-reliance and, ultimately, isolation. I believe the enemy would want nothing more in a year like 2024, than to make you completely isolated from your brother and from your sister and from your neighbor, and even your enemy to just pull you apart at your threads. And that's what he's doing and you have to see it. I'm just telling you, church, you have to see this is happening, because when we see what's happening we get to move in the opposite spirit, we get to do exactly the opposite. So it's actually prophetic. I know I'm preaching to the choir because you guys are the ones that are actually here on a Sunday morning. Right, you guys made community a priority here.
Speaker 2:Many of you are in groups or, you know, in meeting living rooms or do other kinds of expressions here around the church and you meet with others. But the sheer act of getting together sends a prophetic message into the atmosphere that God has done a great thing. He has unified us together to show what he's doing for all of time, and as a church, we get a chance to model that. And so, in like a post COVID world, where it's so much is marked by isolation, we get to do the opposite. And so, instead of leaving our home and our whole life being about us, we get to experience life with new eyes, and we've been trained like this, right? So you go to the grocery store to get food, you go to a workout class to get fit, you go to Starbucks to get your caffeine, you go to church to get your spiritual fix or whatever you need, right? And it's so easy to, even at a church, even in church, to have tunnel vision.
Speaker 2:I'm here to receive something from somebody on stage, and once I get that, I'm out. I got lunch, I got things to do, I'm preparing for the week, and so what happens is we can easily sit in a room like this and be thinking I'm not sure that anybody else here has anything to do with my spiritual life. There are side characters in my story of what God is doing with me, and I hope he speaks to me, regardless of what these yahoos are doing next to me right. They don't appear to have anything valuable to offer me. I'm here for a word from God and these people are, let's just face it, a little odd and they're getting in my way, right. They're singing a little too loud, they're dancing a little too much, they're shouting I didn't like that shout, it was just too much. It interrupted me, right. And so we can easily come in and transfer. We've been discipled into a world where there's a me first preference. Can we just face that? Can we just acknowledge that? But when we come in, we're being discipled out of that world. And I love what.
Speaker 2:Cs Lewis, when he first came to the faith, when he was studying at Oxford University, CS Lewis had gone on to write Chronicles of Narnia and many other foundational works that have served us all in our faith journeys very well. But CS Lewis, when he first came in, he couldn't understand why people were coming to church and in his words it was fifth rate lyrics set to sixth rate music. He's like why on earth would I subject myself to this every week? And so he starts this quote. He says I thought that I could do it on my own by retiring to my rooms and reading theology. Then he goes on. He says I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education. And then, gradually, my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns, which were just sixth rate music, were nevertheless being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic side boots in the opposite pew. Thank you. And then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.
Speaker 2:So there's something that actually happens when we come into Christ, where all of a sudden, we're set apart of a family. And these aren't just random other people, they're divine image-bearers. Quite possibly, god has sent to be part of our story in this journey of life, to reveal His will and His voice in a whole new way. You guys with me. So God speaks to us not just individually but through the community of saints. It saves us from self dependence and self reliance, which we're all guilty of. So, that being said, that's the invitation.
Speaker 2:So there's kind of three things I wanna talk about quickly Hearing God's voice through each other, so that's helping each other recognize and pay attention to the voice of God. There's hearing God's voice with each other, which is listening to God through honoring the way he speaks to all of us quite differently, and then hearing God's voice for each other, which is allowing God to speak to one another, all right, or speak from us to one another. So first let's talk about hearing God's voice through each other. So we acknowledge that honestly for all of us, we don't hear God perfectly. We're kind of guessing a lot of the times and we're doing our best to receive what he has. But, like Paul says, we look through a mirror dimly and sometimes we just don't know, and so we need help. We have our own, all of us have our own biases, judgments, fears, worries, life experiences and perspectives that sometimes cloud the way that we hear from God, which is why he sets us into community, to bring strength and to bring life. Hearing God is a lifelong pursuit and the reality is we need guides, counselors, mentors, pastors, spiritual mothers and fathers in our life to discern how God is coming to us. And so in the passage we just read, we see that Samuel needed an Eli right, david needed the Samuel, elisha needed Elijah, timothy needed his grandmother, lois and his mother, eunice, and then later on he would need Paul. He needed a whole kind of variety of mothers and fathers in the faith and you and I do too because we don't always know how God is coming to us until there's somebody that can be with us to pay attention to what God is actually doing in our lives, and it helps to unlock, it helps to see oh, that's what's happening in my life.
Speaker 2:I had the opportunity back in 2022 to go to Muscle Shoals, alabama, muscle Shoals, alabama and to visit an older mentor of mine, but while I was there, I realized that it was also the birthplace of a woman that many of you have heard of, named Helen Keller, and so Helen Keller, many of you know, was born deaf and blind. She grew up to be a prolific thinker, writer and inspiration, but her breakthrough moment was when she realized she finally put it together. There's one moment where she realized what water was, and she was taken out by her caretaker, ann Sullivan, and there was a pump out back. I have actually a photo of this pump I got to visit. This is the actual pump, the water pump where, for the first time, she realized what language was. She realized that what she was feeling with her hands was there was a word for it and there was a way to communicate, and it was this aha moment. Here's what she said.
Speaker 2:She says, as the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, for slowly and then rapidly, I said, still my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty consciousness of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew that the W-A-T-E-R meant the wonderful, cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, giving it light, hope, joy, and set it free. And so, for many of us across the room, this is what happens when we first hear the voice of God and we discern that God is speaking to us. You might not know it, but there comes a moment you need that water moment, that, oh, my God, that's what's happening in my, that's what you're trying to say, and that happens in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's in a season of life where you have new dreams or ideas that you don't know how God is involved in, but you share them with spiritual community and they help. You see, oh no, god is leading you to a new career path. God is leading you to serve somebody, to build this new dream right. Maybe you can't stop thinking about the underserved people in the community, the people that aren't even in the room here with us, and it's occupying your mind. You didn't realize that was God speaking to you, but others that were able to companion you on the journey are able to point that out. Maybe it is the dreams in the night and you had dreams and you wrote them off as very insignificant and consequential and then you shared them and realized oh, my God, god loves me so much. He is actually whispering to me in the night hours because my rational, logical mind is too in the way during the day to be able to receive what he has for me.
Speaker 2:Maybe some of you, it's being in the scriptures and you keep returning to the scriptures and you're drawn to certain passages. But you need others who come alongside of you on the road and open the scriptures to you, to see it in a new way, to help you pinpoint what God is saying. There's experiences, signs, doors of opportunity. There's some of you. God is tugging on your heart and oftentimes it's in the context of community and friendship, deep spiritual friendship, that God points out what he's doing.
Speaker 2:Have you ever been in a place where somebody asked you a question or pointed out something that you didn't notice. Maybe you were in a room and somebody said oh man, don't you love the music? You didn't even know there was music playing until they said that. And then, once they said that, you realize oh my gosh, I really do love the music, right? Or you're on a drive and somebody says look at those wild flowers on the side of the road. And you were focusing on the road so intently that you didn't notice what you were driving through. And the moment somebody asked a question, you became aware of something that was all around you that you didn't know. Or maybe it was like hey, did you feel the presence of God in the room? Did you feel that when we were praying for that person? Did you sense that when we ask questions like that, it happens in community. In community, we actually come into a heightened awareness of the God who is all around us just by asking questions and pointing things out. Right?
Speaker 2:This is why the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews, chapter 10, he says let us consider how to serve one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is in the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near. You know, don't get out of the habit. Meet together even more so as you move forward even more, make it a bigger priority. Why? Because you need to stir each other up to love and to good works. Paul says in Colossians 3, he said let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. So do you guys know that when we're singing there is the one-on-one connection? It is very personal and we do believe that we're in an intimate friendship with God. So we're singing one-on-one.
Speaker 2:But do you know that when you're singing, you're actually admonishing and teaching everybody else in the room what's true about Jesus? Just through the sound of your own voice? It's one of the most powerful parts of our gatherings. It's not just that it's a killer song, it's the actual listening. I mean having moments where it's acapella. Just listening to the voices is so critical because there's something inside of you need to hear somebody else singing that song from their heart. You need it, I need it. I need to hear your voice. We need to teach each other through what we're singing is true about God. That's what's actually happening during worship. It's so much more than we think. It's a lot harder to do online. It's a lot harder to do online.
Speaker 2:So we have to be available, though, to be with each other in these kinds of ways, to ask compassion and curious questions, to ask what is God saying to you? What are you noticing at this point in your life? Why is this sticking out to you? Why do you think you see this pattern in your life right now? Where do you see God at work? We ask questions to one another to provoke and to bring awareness to each other, and it's a gift. It's a gift.
Speaker 2:I got to do this with one of my sons several weeks ago. Often times when I'm tucking my kids in bed, I just sometimes I just ask them if they have questions, or I ask them if God's been speaking anything to them recently. And my son, in this particular night, I said hey, buddy, have you heard the voice of Jesus recently? Has he spoken anything to your heart? And he said well, he said no, he's like, actually, I don't know if I hear God's voice, I don't know if I can hear God's voice, but I didn't want to tell you because I was scared to be disappointed. That's like the kind of thing like a pastor's kid says you just got to know, like, and obviously like yeah, my heart like kind of broke in that moment because I'm like dude, I'm never disappointed.
Speaker 2:I'm like hearing God's voice can sometimes be tricky, can be hard, but I bet you hear his voice. You don't even know it, but you need to know. Like you don't need to hear God's voice for me to be approving of you. It's okay, pressure's off. I want you guys to know that too. Pressure's off, by the way, to have to hear anything. Okay, you're loved, you're beloved by God, you belong.
Speaker 2:But I got to follow up with my son and you know, that night and the next night we got to do some exercises together, similar to what we've done in our services the last few weeks. We got to stop and just let him bring a word to mind for each other or ask him, you know, just to do like an imaginative prayer, and we did that together and he was able actually to hear, like we helped him be able to see. No, you actually are hearing from God and this is fun. It's something you get to do. It's not as complicated as you think and we just it was kind of like that Eli Samuel moment where it was just making myself available just so he could hear from God and listen.
Speaker 2:I want to encourage you guys. This is what we are doing for our kids, both our children and our youth, and I just want to offer a little bit of a shameless plug here. Both in children's ministry and youth ministry, we need spiritual mothers and fathers. We need Eli's to come alongside the Samuel's to say what you're experiencing in life you're doing okay, go for it. I think you're hearing from God in this part of your life. Go back to your room and say speak, lord, your servant is listening. We need you guys. We need you, spiritual mothers and fathers, to be with our kids on Sunday mornings. That's what they're doing down there. It's not childcare. They're helping our kids experiencing God in the Scriptures. If you are, if you're in the children's ministry, I just thank you, I applaud you for doing that.
Speaker 2:Some of you need to be a part of that. Once a month, or maybe even once every six weeks, go be with the kids, because this is our greatest joy is to help each other hear the voice of God. It indexes our lives towards Him. Amen. Everybody smile at me. This is what we get to do, okay, so we get to hear God's voice with each other. This is with each other. We're wired differently, alright, and this is actually what makes it fun. We're not only through each other, it's not just we're helping each other hear the voice of God, but we hear the voice of God with each other. Sometimes it takes us being together in a particular kind of way to figure out what the heck God is trying to say.
Speaker 2:So 1 Corinthians 12, Paul gets at this. He says for just as the body is one, it has many members, all the members of the body. Though many are one body, so it is with Christ, for in one spirit. We are all baptized into one body. Jews are Greek, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. I love that we're all made to drink of one spirit. He continues for the body does not consist of one member, but of many.
Speaker 2:If a foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye. I do not belong to the body. That would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, that would be. Where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? As it is, god arranged the members of the body, each one of them, as he chose. This is a picture of the body when one body, many parts, were joined by one head. We only have one head, and it is Christ, and so sometimes the way we discover what God is saying is through being with each other in a way that prioritizes His presence and waiting and listening, and it is all over the Scriptures. Acts 15 is a brilliant picture of this.
Speaker 2:As the church was being formed, they were all trying to figure out what the heck is going on. They had no playbook. They had no Bible except the Old Testament Scriptures. They didn't know what they should be doing or what they should not be doing. So they had this epic conversation in Acts 15, where they were trying to figure out all these Gentiles are getting saved, coming into the faith. They had only been Jewish at this point in time, so they are all coming into the faith. They don't even know what to do with that, and they are having this huge conversation, namely around the topic of circumcision.
Speaker 2:And so they are in there and Peter, this whole council, peter speaks up, and then they are sharing stories of what is happening with Paul and Barnabas, and finally James speaks up and says I think this is what we should do. We shouldn't prevent anything from them coming into the faith. I just want to say right now, I am very, very thankful that this wasn't just one guy in the room said you know what? I don't think we should just keep going, just do it as it is right. This is a very consequential decision. Just so you know, 2000 years later, I'm glad this was settled not just by one person who made a decision, but they actually waited before the Lord and had robust conversation. And so here we are today, not under the yoke of what they were at at that point, because they prioritized being together in such a way they could hear God speaking in different ways.
Speaker 2:I'm thankful that, as a leadership here at the church, when we're in our team meetings, though, we all bring things to the table. We're all bringing angles and perspectives my favorite part of the team meetings is not just when people say yes to my ideas, all right, or getting somebody else's idea. It's not just pushing things through. That's not how it works in the body of Christ. My favorite parts of our team meetings and our eldership meetings and our lead team meetings and even just other ministries is the point in the night where we all share ideas and then we stop, we shut up and we listen and we wait on the Lord. We wait for Him to speak and then all of a sudden, everything starts to come into place. We do this before our church services, back in the theater, and you're welcome to join at 8.30 on Sunday mornings. We come in there and before we share anything, we take time and we just listen and we wait and we say, god, we're trusting that you're speaking and we don't want to presume that we know exactly what you're doing this morning. So we're going to wait for you to speak. We're listening with each other and it's in the priority of His presence that all of a sudden he starts to whisper His thoughts and His reflections and His insights and words and vision.
Speaker 2:It's always way different than what I thought. It's always amazing how it happens and how uniquely God speaks. This happens in our families. I hope this happens in your family too. I'm grateful that my wife is wired a lot different than me. I used to fight it, but now I'm like oh God, thank you, I would not be alive, I would not be a functional human being without her. Megan, and I hear God very differently. She is way more practical than I am. She has got a supernatural gift called common sense. All right, it's actually a real thing, uncommon common sense. She just kind of needs. She knows just what needs to happen. I tend to be a little bit more cerebral, very much more nuanced, process-oriented. Let's think this through. Let's go read a few books before we make a decision on this. All right, I'm going to own it. I'm not hiding anything, guys, I'm going to own that.
Speaker 2:He's brought us together, though, and we hear from God differently, and I'm grateful that, when it comes to making very important decisions, we stop and we wait and we ask the Lord to speak and we spend times in prayer, and this is what we all get to do. We get to do it with our families, and we do this with our kids sometimes, where we all just stop and listen for a word. Together and as a family, try to hear from God. We listen with each other and it's one of the best parts of being in the church. It's one of the best parts of what we get to do, because I don't know what God's given to you, but I'm excited to find out when he speaks through you. Are you guys with me here? Okay, no, I won't spend as much time on this last point because we're going to actually practice some of this together. Okay, but this last point hearing God's voice for each other. So we talked about hearing God's voice through each other, guiding each other into a recognition and awareness of God's voice. Talked about hearing God's voice with each other, sharing spaces where the Lord is honored, and we come in curious what are you wanting to speak to this fellowship here? That's so important. But this last one, hearing God's voice for each other this is the delight of the heart of God too.
Speaker 2:1 Corinthians 14,. Paul says pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. And he continues on in another verse. He says the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. And it's this beautiful thing in the church to be a people where the prophetic is normal. This is every day life. This is life in the kingdom, where it's the delight of the Father, it's the delight of the spirit to reveal to us the mind of Christ and the mind of the Father. This is the friendship with God that we get to be with each other in such a way where we can say God, what is it that you want to say to Chloe Capel over here? What do you want to say to Suzanne Brown in the back? What do you want to say to each person in the room, and is there anything that you want to hand, deliver to them as a message to edify them, to encourage them, to console them, to comfort them, to reveal to them what's true? Right, dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of my favorite kind of heroes of the faith.
Speaker 2:He ended up getting killed because he tried to assassinate Hitler. That's a whole other story. He was a pastor in Germany, but he was working very diligently as a pastor to disciple people in a way that stood out, that was distinct from the political climate of the day. Hello, he said this God has willed that we should seek and find his living word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings. Therefore, christians need other Christians who speak God's word to them. It's true for me, it's true for you we need each other to speak God's word into each other's hearts.
Speaker 2:And the truth is that the look out in this community. We put a stake in the ground here. We have for years that we're committed to making sure this is a safe place to hear from God for each other, to practice and to acknowledge. We don't always get it perfect, we don't always get it right, so we come with humility, but we're determined to try because it's worth trying, even if we fail. Okay. It's such an important key here that when we're trying to come alongside each other to help you, to help hear from God for each other as a gift to each other, so we get to experiment and we get to fail without rocks being thrown at us. Right, as long as we're willing to take responsibility.
Speaker 2:And if we don't hear correctly or if we use words to actually hurt other people, we're willing to say sorry, I missed that one or sorry, I didn't get that right. Right, and we submit to each other right. And so when we come to each other with the sense of what God is might be saying, when we don't always use very you know hard, bold language. This is what God has to say to you. Thus saith the Lord, we come to each other in a spirit of humility, saying listen, I was just over there praying. I had an image in my head I think it's for you, or I had a picture, or I had this phrase come to mind. Does this mean anything to you? And then we're willing to come to each other with a sense of maybe God is trying to speak from us to each other. Right, and this is why we do things like the prophetic round table. This is where we have opportunities to grow in this. It's so critical.
Speaker 2:This is why Paul singles this out as one of the paramount ways we actually love one another. He said pursue love and the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. Be eager to prophesy. And I want to acknowledge some of us have been kind of a little jaded or maybe hurt by, you know maybe, words spoken to us in the past. I just want to say to you that that doesn't mean that all prophecy needs to be thrown out. That would be a tremendous mistake. Let us become people that, in health and in responsibility and in ownership, learn to prophesy with maturity and with love. That is what we're trying to do, because we believe that God wants to not only do it in the church. He wants to send us in all the places, all the places he's giving this.
Speaker 2:Listen, I have met. I've messed it up before. I've shared words I don't have time to go into it. I've shared words with people that were just totally off, like laughable off. I've shared words with people that I thought were off and it turns out I found out later they were spot on. Just none of us knew it at the time. I've received words that were just like what in the world does that mean? I have no idea, and then it would come to pass later. I've received words that were hurtful too. So all of it takes a tremendous amount of grace and maturity and willingness to be with each other. But can we just, can we just acknowledge together that God loves to speak to His people through each other? Amen.